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Final 2014 clinical quality measures available

Research Activities, December 2012, No. 388

The final 2014 clinical quality measures (CQMs) for health professionals and hospitals are now available, along with the specifications for electronic reporting and access to the related data elements and value sets. The value sets define clinical concepts, providing a list of numerical values (e.g., code values from the vocabularies of ICD-9, SNOMED CT, etc.) and individual descriptions for the clinical concepts used to define the quality measures.

Each clinical concept referenced in a clinical quality measure is represented by a set of code values, also known as value sets. To help providers and vendors navigate the new CQM specifications, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed the U.S. Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) with both Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 (2014) clinical quality measures. The USHIK Web site provides different formats for viewing, downloading, and comparing versions of electronic CQMs and their value sets in response to user requests.

AHRQ's USHIK is a metadata registry of health care-related standards, their data elements, and metadata funded and directed by AHRQ, in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Veterans Administration. USHIK's Meaningful Use portal is a comprehensive resource for accessing an organized presentation of Meaningful Use clinical quality measures and value sets. It is unique in allowing users to compare present, past, and future proposed versions of Meaningful Use quality measure and value sets. USHIK allows researchers to browse, compare, and synchronize diverse data sets in order to promote interoperability, uniformity, and comparability of health data.

You can access USHIK at http://ushik.ahrq.gov. CMS has developed guidance for understanding and using the final CQMs, as well as human readable files and e-specifications.